] The most-read webloggers aren't necessarily the ones with ] the most original ideas, say researchers at ] Hewlett-Packard Labs. ] ] Using newly developed techniques for graphing the flow of ] information between blogs, the researchers have ] discovered that authors of popular blog sites regularly ] borrow topics from lesser-known bloggers -- and they ] often do so without attribution. ] These findings are important to ] sociologists who are interested in learning how ideas ] grow from isolated topics into full-blown epidemics that ] "infect" large populations. Such an understanding is also ] important to marketers, who hope to be able to pitch ] products and ideas directly to the mos |